abram at the crossroads

Abram at the Crossroads of Civilization10This is the genealogy of Shem: Shem was one hundred years old, and begot Arphaxad two years after the flood. 11After he begot Arphaxad, Shem lived five hundred years, and begot sons and daughters.12Arphaxad lived thirty-five years, and begot Salah. 13After he begot Salah, Arphaxad lived four hundred and three years, and begot sons and daughters.14 Salah lived thirty years, and begot Eber. 15 After he begot Eber, Salah lived four hundred and three years, and begot sons and daughters.16Eber lived thirty-four years, and begot Peleg. 17 After he begot Peleg, Eber lived four hundred and thirty years, and begot sons and daughters.18Peleg lived thirty years, and begot Reu. 19 After he begot Reu, Peleg lived two hundred and nine years, and begot sons and daughters.20Reu lived thirty-two years, and begot Serug. 21After he begot Serug, Reu lived two hundred and seven years, and begot sons and daughters.22Serug lived thirty years, and begot Nahor. 23After he begot Nahor, Serug lived two hundred years, and begot sons and daughters.24 Nahor lived twenty-nine years, and begot Terah. 25After he begot Terah, Nahor lived one hundred and nineteen years, and begot sons and daughters.26Now Terah lived seventy years, and begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran.27This is the genealogy of Terah: Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran begot Lot. 28And Haran died before his father Terah in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans. 29Then Abram and Nahor took wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and the father of Iscah. 30But Sarai was barren; she had no child.31And Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran and dwelt there. 32So the days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran (Genesis 11:10-32, NKJV).

We have seen most of Shem’s genealogy in Chapter 10, but a few details are added. We are shown here that Shem’s line is the one to watch. This version gives us the age of each father when his wife bore the son, and the patriarch’s age at death. The genealogy ends with Terahs’ three sons, Abram, Nahor and Haran. As with Noah and Peleg, Abram is the focal point for a generation faced with tremendous change.

Abram’s life stands at the two crossroads confronting the world roughly 250 years after the dispersion from Babel:

maintaining a hunter/gatherer nomadic lifestyle, or settling into agriculture and cities;

continuing in the development of pagan religion, or returning to worship of God.

​The evidence for all of this exists today in an area of southern Turkey near the Syrian border. Today the largest town in this area is Sanliurfa, formerly Urfa, and the most likely location of Ur. (* See below for the evidence of Ur being near Haran in what was then Syria. Whether Ur is in the southern region of Babylon or the northern region of Syria/modern Turkey is less important than the fact that the land was one of idolatry.) The location in modern southern Turkey is significant because near this Ur, modern day Sanliurfa, are the oldest megaliths known. The site is Göbekli Tepe, home to more than sixty multi-ton T-shaped limestone pillars, most of them engraved with bas-reliefs of dangerous animals. There is also a good bit of math on this site for those who want to delve into latitude, geodetic triangles, and the moon. The handling of these huge structures and the math of their location reminds us that “early man” (before the Flood, around the time of Babel) may have been far more sophisticated than the sciences have led us to believe.

Older than any other such sites (such as Stonehenge, e.g.), the area lacks signs of civilization at the time that the monoliths were carved and moved. The evidence suggests that the religious structures came first, before the people organized into cities. Abram, as his father Terah and others of the 4th and 5th generations after Babel, lived at a time when the dispersal of people slowed down. The rejection of God that had been evident at Babel escalated with the carving and moving of these gigantic limestone engravings into a circle. We understand from this why God called Abram out of his country, away from his family, and out of his father’s house. Note that Terah had idols (Joshua 24:2), as did Laban (Gen. 31:19), and thus the call away from family as well as country. (Abram’s call is the next article.)

*Strong’s Concordance associates the Hebrew word kesed with the Chaldeans, but their history does not go back so far. The confusion comes with Nahor’s 4th son (Gen. 22:22), Kesed (Strong’s H3778). Nahor is not listed as following Abraham and Lot to Haran. Assuming Ur is south of Babylon in the area where the Chaldeans later arose, H3777, the descendants of Kesed, the Kassites, are called Chaldeans. Since Chaldea was not settled and identified as a people until 1,000 years after Abraham, there is the use of the same Hebrew word for the northern area of Ur in the book of Genesis and for the southern area of the Chaldeans (or as “Babylonians of Chaldea” Eze. 23:15) in the biblical books of history. Because Nahor did not go with Abram to Haran but remained in Ur, Abraham said to his servant, “’ but you shall go to my country and to my family, and take a wife for my son Isaac.’” Abraham’s country is where Nahor remained. Note that Laban is described as a Syrian (Gen. 25:20). Rebekah is the sister of Laban and the granddaughter of Abraham’s brother, Nahor. Note that in Acts 7, Stephen uses the Hebrew word kasdites (H3778), the plural of the descendants of Nahor's son, Kesed.

We get two more pieces of information from the genealogy of Chapter 11 when we get to Terah’s sons, listed as Abram, Nahor, and Haran.First, we expect from this that Abram is the oldest, but a little detective work makes us rethink this. Terah began to have children at age 70 (verse 26), and Terah died at the age of 205. After Terah’s death, Abram was 75 years old (Gen. 12:4) when he moved from Haran to the land that God would show him. So Terah must have been 130 years old at Abram’s birth, meaning that Abram was not the first born. The second piece of information is a bit of misinformation by our translators. The name of the son that died before Terah was Haran. We are also told that Terah, along with Abram and Lot, left Ur of the Chaldeans and went to Haran. The use of the same English word – Haran - for the son of Terah, and for the place to which Terah, Abram and Lot travelled, has confused a number of preachers who speak of how the name of the place was to honor the dead son. The name of the son, Haran, is Hebrew for “mountaineer,” Strong’s H2039, Haran (haw-rahn’), perhaps from H2022, “hill country.” The name of the place, Haran, is actually Charan (khaw-rahn’), Strong’s H2771, “parched,” from H2787, meaning “to melt, burn, dry up.” Harran, in southern Turkey near the Syrian border, is recognized as Haran of biblical times.Next article